News tagged with lungfish

Fish have relatively small brains, especially in comparison to birds and mammals. But the picture of how brains evolved, as restored from the spaces inside fossil skulls, might not be as simple as once thought.

Defense systems against pathogens are a critical life-support system of fish that helps protect against infection. A complex network of immune cells and molecules that are located at the interface between the environment ...

Lungfish and salamanders can hear, despite not having an outer ear or tympanic middle ear. These early terrestrial vertebrates were probably also able to hear 300 million years ago, as shown in a new study by Danish researchers.

The term 'living fossil' has a controversial history. For decades, scientists have argued about its usefulness as it appears to suggest that some organisms have stopped evolving. New research has now investigated the origin ...

(Phys.org) —The eel-like body and scrawny "limbs" of the African lungfish would appear to make it an unlikely innovator for locomotion. But its improbable walking behavior, newly described by University of Chicago scientists, ...

(PhysOrg.com) -- The tooth enamel of lungfish and garfish could provide the basis for new material to make lighter more efficient aircraft or vehicles, says a Queensland University of Technology (QUT) physics researcher.

A research group led by Jakob Christensen-Dalsgaard, University of Southern Denmark, have shown that the closest living relatives of the tetrapods, the lungfish, are insensitive to sound pressure, but sensitive to vibrations. ...

Lungfish

Lungfish (also known as salamanderfish) are freshwater fish belonging to the Subclass Dipnoi. Lungfish are best known for retaining characteristics primitive within the Osteichthyes, including the ability to breathe air, and structures primitive within Sarcopterygii, including the presence of lobed fins with a well-developed internal skeleton. Today, they live only in Africa, South America and Australia. While vicariance would suggest this represents an ancient distribution limited to the Mesozoic supercontinent Gondwana, the fossil record suggests that advanced lungfish had a widespread freshwater distribution and that the current distribution of modern lungfish species reflects extinction of many lineages following the breakup of Pangaea, Gondwana and Laurasia.